Interview: Allie Pohevitz talks ‘Survivor: Caramoan’

Allie Pohevitz’s elimination from “Survivor: Caramoan” can be explained using simple math:

If you’re in an alliance of four in a tribe of 10, you shouldn’t assume that the lone guy who everybody hates will be seen as more of a threat than your tightly bunched, cuddling group of pretty people. Because 6 > 4.

Reynold, Allie, Eddie and Hope formed an early alliance within the Fans tribe based on shared interests, shared youth and shared attractiveness. They were convinced that because everybody seemed to hate lazy, ornery Marine Shamar, he’d be an easy first elimination and they could skate. They were incorrect. Led by Sherri, the outsider alliance reminded the Foursome of the basic math I mentioned earlier and voted Allie out.

In this week’s “Survivor” exit interview, Allie talks about hating Shamar, failing to properly obscure her alliance and knowing about the Reynold’s Idol, even if the editing made it look like she didn’t.

Click through for the full Q&A…

HitFix: When you left Tribal Council on Wednesday’s show, you described yourself as “mortified.” As a fan, what has it been like watching yourself on TV playing “Survivor” these past two weeks?

Allie Pohevitz: Isn’t it awful? It’s so cool that I got to experience it and I’m so, so grateful for that, but just the way that I’m watching everything and just how stupid that I look for the whole situation that I got myself into, it’s very hard to watch.

HitFix: Have you been yelling at yourself on TV?

Allie: No. No. Sometimes I’ll just mute it, so I don’t have to listen to the stupid things that come out of my mouth.

HitFix: What in particular has stood out when you’ve watched these two episodes and that you clearly know now was the wrong thing to do?

Allie: First of all, it’s a lot different being there than watching it on TV. You don’t realize how many hours there are in a day when you’re with the same few people, so it’s a lot harder than I thought to keep under wraps the fact that the four of us were such close friends. But also, we did have other people with us. It’s not like we’re that stupid that we thought the four of us were going to take charge and run the whole show. But the fact that we were seen together so often, in our heads we kept trying to break it up and hang out with other people and it clearly wasn’t working as well as we thought it was.

HitFix: We didn’t see you guys give that consideration. What was the thought process you guys went through regarding not standing out as a four-person alliance?

Allie: First of all, we weren’t a four-person alliance. We started with Laura and Matt. Once we knew that Laura switched, we thought we still had Matt and then once Shamar was gone, it would be the four of us and Matt versus everybody else. So we were just under the impression that Matt was 100 percent with us, because the boys kept saying that they were talking to him every single day and it was working and we’re just idiots who didn’t realize we didn’t really have him the whole time. But I do think that he switched his mind late-minute. He wasn’t 100 percent on the Shamar bandwagon or for getting rid of me.

HitFix: When you went into the game, did you go in with the idea that you *didn’t* want to find yourself in exactly the position you found yourself in? Being a part of that sort of Pretty Person alliance?

Allie: Yeah. If you watch the show, I never said that. I never tried to align myself like that. In fact, at first I tried to work with other people, but there’s only so much you can do. If you don’t like somebody, you don’t like somebody. So the fact that I really do genuinely care about the three people I was with — And Matt as well, I really genuinely liked Matt and Laura — so the fact that I was with them, it wasn’t… It is what it is. I didn’t think as far into the game as I should have and I think that’s a big problem that I had going in, watching it. It didn’t occur to me that I should have been thinking so far ahead in the game. I just kept thinking, “Let’s get through the first three days. Let’s get through the first six days.” And that’s what really got to me.

HitFix: You’ve mentioned being in an alliance with Laura and genuinely liking Laura. What happened there and how did she end up basically being the one who it looked like threw your name out there for elimination?

Allie: The problem with that was that when we first got on the island, we kinda split up five-and-five. It was just basically we were gonna get fire. It wasn’t any alliance thing. So it was myself, Laura, Sherri, Reynold and Michael on one side and the other five on the other side and Sherri was basically hardcore trying to get the five of us to work together and I just thought it was very soon. We had been on the island for three minutes and she was very, very hard trying to get all of us to work together and Laura was all for it and Reynold and I kinda looked at each other after that and we’re like, “Well, no. We don’t want to do that. Why would we align ourselves with that when there are stronger people on the tribe?” And, basically, Laura and I had a conversation and I kept explaining to her, “Well, I wanna work with Reynold” and she said she wanted to work with Sherri and the two of them needed each other and I didn’t like Sherri and she didn’t like Reynold and it kinda just blew up in my face.

HitFix: What was your relationship with Reynold like? We saw the first meeting and we saw one night of cuddling, but how strong did you feel like that alliance really was?

Allie: To be honest with you, the alliance was stronger between Reynold and I than I feel like it was with the four of us, but it wasn’t what everybody’s portraying it to be. I think that we genuinely liked each other and I felt like we were all strong competitors and we really wanted to do well in the challenges. I feel like on our tribe, we were the strongest people, so we were just more focused on keeping the tribe strong and when we found the Idol, it was more of a, “Let’s keep this until we get to the Merge.” It wasn’t so much, “We’re hiding from the rest of the group,” which is what it looked like. So it was very strong, but I think a lot of it was that we were so close as friends, moreso than as a giant alliance, which it looked like.

HitFix: We didn’t see that last night. You knew about the Idol?

Allie: Yes. Just me. Hope and Eddie had no idea.

HitFix: So what was it that you guys were hoping to accomplish with that?

Allie: We were hoping just to get through the first votes and then tell Hope and Eddie about it and try to make it into the Merge with it just as a secret. At that point, it seemed like nobody but me, him and Michael were even aware that there was an Idol on the island. Nobody seemed to be looking for the Idol, so the fact that he had it and the two of us knew about it for a few days, just seemed like we already had an advantage and then when everything blew up right before Tribal Council and we got called out on it, it was just a mess.

HitFix: Obviously one answer would be “He could have given you the Idol,” but is there anything you guys could have done with the Idol if you’d know that you were being targeted that you think could have prevented that? Beyond him handing it to you…

Allie: Every day I wake up and think I should have just taken the Idol from him, because I know that we talked about using it, if either one of us needed it, we would use it and not save it for the group and it sucks that we couldn’t make it to the Merge with that, but we have to do what we have to do. So every single day I think about that, but I think the boys thought that they had Matt and Hope and I trusted Eddie and Reynold that they had Matt and it got down to the fact that Sherri was really running a good show and she did a good job as far as controlling everybody and keeping Shamar with her. I think if I had taken the Idol from Reynold and used it for myself, I just would have been gone the next week, because at that point, the line would have been drawn in the sand. Matt & Mike still would have been on the other side and it still would have been 5-4.

HitFix: Do you think that Shamar lulled you guys into a fall sense of security? That you guys thought there was such an obvious target that you didn’t think of protecting yourself?

Allie: No, because I don’t think that Shamar was an act. I think that the way he’s being portrayed is making him look great, actually, in comparison to what he is in real life. I feel like yes, he thought that he was doing a great job and he thought that the people that he was working with genuinely liked him. I know for a fact that they don’t, that they were using him. He made it farther than I did, so I can’t criticize his game. As a person, I never want to speak to him again.

HitFix: If you say this is making him look good, what would make him look worse that we haven’t seen?

Allie: It’s the amount that he would attack us. He was constantly cursing at us and telling us to do certain things and get him water and get him food and move out of his way and do this… And then we would do something and he would tell us we were doing it wrong. Like that first day when we made fire? He had nothing to do with that. He stood up for 10 seconds and happened to be standing there when the boys got it. So let’s not act like you’re some God that came in right at the end and swooped in and made fire. You had nothing to do with it. You get off your fat ass for 10 seconds and you happened to get lucky that you were standing there when the camera was around. Let’s not pretend you’re some hero. [I laugh.] You can laugh, but I’m sure there’s gonna be a bunch of other people that tell you the same thing.

HitFix: You mentioned not liking her, but it sounds like you’re giving Sherri a fair amount of positive credit for alliance-building?

Allie: Yeah, I think that Sherri was brilliant as far as that went. We wouldn’t hang out in real life, but I don’t have any problems with Sherri per se. I think the fact that she knew she was a threat… Sherri went out there guns-blazing, ready to go. She wanted everybody on her team. She wanted to make an alliance with anybody who looked at her and I think we all kinda caught on to that. So the fact that she took Shamar under her wing and knew that Shamar was always gonna be a bigger target than her as long as he was around, I think that was brilliant, because I personally couldn’t have stood talking to Shamar five hours a day. So more power to her.

HitFix: You’ve mentioned the “real life” thing both here now and on the show. Is it harder than maybe we think it is to keep the line between “Survivor” as a game you have to play and maybe what you’d do in real life under different circumstances?

Allie: Yeah. You know what it is? There’s so many hours in the day when you’re not doing anything. You can only get water and fire so many times a day and when there’s a lull in conversation, who do you talk to? The people that you have things in common with. So the fact that Eddie and I live 40 minutes apart? We talked more than, say, me and Matt, because he lives in Ohio. Things like that, you come from different backgrounds, so you’re always gonna more closely associate with the people who have your background when there’s a lull in the conversation. Unfortunately, we were doing it way too obvious and I think everybody kinda formed around that and that was our undoing.

HitFix: Of the Favorites, when you saw who came out of those helicopters as this season’s returning players, who were your favorites of that group?

Allie: I would say that I really liked Corrine and Brenda. I liked Malcolm because at that point Malcolm’s season hadn’t aired yet, so we saw him and just thought, “Oh. He might be really good. He’s probably a threat.” He smiled and waved at us and we’re like, “Oh, he’s great,” just because he was moreso like one of us. We had never seen him play before, so we didn’t know what he had up his sleeve. Corrine I liked because I thought maybe down the line I could work with her, just for the fact that Corrine tells it like it is. If she likes you, she’s your best friend. If she doesn’t like you, she doesn’t like you. So the fact that she was out there, she was one of them, I felt like if I ever the chance to work with her, I would know right away whether or not she was on my side and I felt like I could use that. Brenda just seemed like a really serious competitor during his first season and I thought that maybe I could work with that, whereas say an Andrea was more wishy-washy and she would would jump back and forth. I felt like, I don’t want somebody that I couldn’t tell watching their season where they were. If I couldn’t tell watching it, I had no idea in real life what they were thinking.

HitFix: Who was on the other side of the coin? Who were you not looking forward to relating with after a Merge?

Allie: I was thinking Phillip and probably Cochran. I actually thoroughly enjoyed Cochran, watching his season, and then when he switched on everybody I was just, in my heart, I was like, “If somebody did that to me, I wouldn’t even know what to do with myself.” So watching it, I loved him, but playing it, I didn’t want anything to do with him. And Phillip, there’s only so much crazy that you can handle.

HitFix: You’ve known what these first two episodes were leading up to, but now that that pain is over are you gonna be able to relax and watch the rest of this season?

Allie: Yeah, I know most of what happens for the rest of the season, so I think I should be OK. I kinda wanna see the next episode, see if anybody say anything or how it went versus what I actually heard after the game was over. We’ll see, but I definitely can relax. I think the biggest thing was how I was gonna be portrayed and they didn’t show me as… I spoke back to Shamar a lot. I stood up for myself. I held my own. I did a lot of work around camp. Unfortunately, you don’t really get to see that. I felt like they basically had Reynold narrating our tribe, so that was unfortunate, but I don’t think they did anything or showed anything that made me look particularly bad. So it went OK. I knew what was coming.

HitFix: Is there any one specific thing that happened out there that you wish we’d gotten the chance to see?

Allie: Just my Tribal Council. Shamar and I went at it for a while. The fact that I knew we had the Idol, I was stunned that it looked like I was shocked. I’d known about the Idol for a few days. It is what it is, but I felt like I played a larger part in the game, which they proved by voting me out and saying I was strategic, but you watch the show and it doesn’t look like I had any strategy at all, but obviously there was a reason people voted me out. It wasn’t like I was just standing in the background braiding Hope’s hair.